New Fruit Muffins, Another Zoya Manicure, A Room Upgrade, and My Family Outdoors!

After a long six month wait, I finally tried this recipe. It seems like a spring/summer flavor, which is why I didn't try it when I found the recipe last fall. I call it Mandarin Coconut Muffins, and it's one of my favorite, because of the use of whole grain flour and wheat germ.

Mixing the sour cream, eggs, and mandarin oranges is the first step. This always helps bring refrigerated items to room temperature. At the same time, you can toast your wheat germ in the oven. Don't burn it like I have every time I make these. LOL.

Combine your dry ingredients next, including that toasted wheat germ.

Have a sweet four year old help you if you have too many irons in the fire. :o)

Pour and mix wet into dry until JUST moistened.

Remember, I like to add the nuts in before the wet and dry are completely blended. It makes for a moister muffin.

Do you recall that I mentioned too many irons in the fire? Today, I decided to bake 3 kinds of muffins. So while the Mandarin Coconut are in the oven, let's look briefly at the Lemon Muffin that my daughter loves so much.

 

The Mandarin Coconut will come out a bit more brown than most, because of the whole wheat flour and wheat germ that we use. It also requires a bit less cook time, especially if you want to avoid dry muffins.

Here are the lemon muffins before we iced them. Just a note, these are a poundcake muffin, not a spongy muffin. I basically converted a lemon poundcake recipe into a muffin, because I love the density of the poundcake so much. (Mandarin recipe at the end of this post. Lemon Muffin recipe in previous posts)

My nails finally started growing... I must have finally found the right combination of herbs and supplements for this pregnancy. As long as I keep them covered in color, they do fine. Once the color starts to chip away, my nails seem to go brittle and break off.

Zoya Penny and Zoya Jem: alternate patterns on each hand.

I'm not  sure why I only took baked photos of the Pear Muffin. Perhaps I've shared this recipe before? It's one of my favorites. I say that a lot. LOL. This year, I switched to canned fruit (pear, peach, mandarin) in my fruit muffins because of shelf life and the heat of summer. But using fresh pear is so tasty! I recommend it! (Pear Muffin recipe at bottom of post)

 

We've lived here in this 600 square foot house for over a year now. When we discovered I was pregnant last fall, we thought certainly we would have to move. Where would we fit a crib, much less any other baby paraphenalia? But over the months, we have looked at other rentals in the area, and we've decided we don't want to trade our huge outdoor grassy area for a larger house. Nor do we want to leave the township we are in. So... I've been sprucing things up around here without adding too much. I turned our bed around to make space for the old dresser that our daughter used. It also allows for the bassinet when necessary.

Then, I added some inexpensive light-blocking curtains and cafe rods with a bit of ribbon for tiebacks. Actually, I bought them to keep the 5 am sun out. It works very well, but at the same time, having curtains in the room really gave the finishing touches to our room and made it feel like a new place!

Yesterday, we took a much needed 'day off' and stayed home all day. At the end of our rest, Rick and Tori took advantage of our grass. "Come on Papa. Don't you want to Shabbat with me on the grass?"

 

I thrill to know that my oldest child will grow up with memories like this photo portrays: spacious, grassy outdoors behind a cozy house where she ran and played outside with her dad and chased Robins and caught lightning bugs almost daily.

In our town, there is a house on a very busy corner where you can always find a yard sale. Usually, it's furniture and other odd items that they have found at other sales and are reselling at a marked up price. This yard sale is almost daily. I stopped by yesterday to peek at a wall cabinet, but in my perusing, I found these handmade purses for $12 (got mine for $10). The woman that lives there sews them herself. It was such a great find, because I've been shopping for sling purses that fit my quirky needs in a purse for four months now. Most purses are either too floppy, don't have enough pockets for easy access to my essentials (keys, sunglasses, cell phone), or are just plain not my style or color. I wanted something spring colored, not my typical black, brown, or red. This was the perfect match with it's 3 inner pockets and caribiner hook at the top for my keys. And I didn't mind trying a new color and style. Of course, Rick wanted to know where she got the strap, because he'd love that for a belt. LOL. Too bad! It's MINE. LOL.

Mandarin Coconut Muffins

Ingredients

3/4 C all purpose flour

3/4 C whole wheat flour

2/3 C wheat germ (toasted or not)

1/2 C sugar

1/2 C coconut

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 C sour cream

2 eggs

1 can (11 ounces) mandarin oranges, drained

1/2 C chopped nuts (I used pecans or walnuts)

In small bowl, blend sour cream, eggs, and oranges. In large bowl, combine flours, wheat germ, sugar, coconut, baking soda and salt. Stir wet mixture into dry ingredients until almost moistened, then add nuts. Stir only til just moistened. Spoon into muffin tins (lined) 3/4 full. Bake at 400F for 17-20 minutes. Cool immediately on wire rack.

Pear Muffin

Ingredients

2 C flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 T baking powder

1 tsp nutmeg (for added flavor, add a bit of cardamom and mace)

1/2 C brown sugar

2 eggs

1 C apple juice

1/3 C vegetable oil

1 large pear or 1 can (11-14 oz) drained pears

1/2 C walnut pieces

1/2 C sugar crystals

Slightly beat eggs and combine with juice and oil. Stir flour, powder, salt, and spice(s). Stir in brown sugar. Make a well in center and add wet mixture, together w/ chopped pear. Stir til just moistened. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Sprinkle with walnuts and sugar crystals. Bake @400F 15-20 minutes. Cool in pan 5 minutes before placing on a wire rack. 

A Seafood Dinner, Lemon Loaf Experiment, and a Homemade Bird Feeder!

Been wondering where my manicures have gone?
Down the drain, along with all the nutrients that normally keep nails growing.
I haven't had a nail to paint for a few months, and while I try different herbal supplements to improve the situ, I have ignored the paint bottles in my caboodle!
Well, except to paint my toenails, which I painted in March, when the sun came out and I could still see my feet. LOL

Tori's friends at the farm gave us this idea for homemade bird feeders one day. We finally got around to making them... smear peanut butter in the pinecone, then roll it in bird seed, and hang the cone from a string outside.

As with any craft, Tori was enthralled with the process,,,she was and meticulous and focused...

Since that one BBQ day when I asked her to take my picture, she has been ALL about grabbing my camera. Her is one of a dozen photos she shot of me hanging the pinecones.

Then, during a random conversation with someone who didn't know we had made these, I was informed that peanut butter can choke a bird to death. Apparently,  birds have this particular texture (?) on their tongue that prevents them from removing a sticky substance such as peanut butter from their tongue.
We took them down and bought real bird feeders (to be shown in future posts).

SALMON AND BRAISED VEGETABLES
For dinner that night, I wanted fish. My husband hasn't made it to the fishing holes yet (lol- the fishing hole being the DELAWARE RIVER, helloooO!), though they're only a handful of miles away. So, I had to BUY fish, much to my chagrin. Rainbow trout, bass, tilapia...all the fish was $18 per pound, so I chose salmon, which was $7.99 per pound if I buy two! (No worries on the fishing ordeal, though. In June, we're to go camping before Baby Boy arrives, and Hubby is going to show Tori what fishing is all about! She's ecstatic!)

I made dinner with this salmon recipe (although, I cooked my brown rice separately in a rice cooker), and for the veggies, I braised (our favorite method lately) some cut up veggies from the refrigerator [choosing whichever veggies would add a pop of color and taste good together] in butter, olive oil, celery salt, onion powder, tarragon, and a pinch of cayenne for the slight 'bite' that my husband craves. On a medium high heat, it took but a few minutes to tenderized the veggies. Veggies over the rice, salmon sauce drizzled over everything.... it was another "Mm-mmmmm" meal in our family that night.

On Friday nights, we like to have dessert. That day, while shopping at Wegmans for my meal stuffs, I saw this cake at the beginning of our shopping spree. I knew I had to have it. Call it pregnancy craving, because I don't crave sweets. I crave bitter. But lately, I've wanted dessert dessert dessert (so completely opposite is this pregnancy compared to 5 years ago with Tori. She never had a sweet bite in the womb!).

Anyway, Coconut cake is what it is, in case you wondered. :)

And everyone's exclamations....

LEMON LEMON LOAF

This recipe was so time consuming that I won't be offering it at the farm for sale. I wouldn't make anything! But, I did find another lemon pound cake recipe for muffins that I will share in a later post. And my family sure enjoyed eating it, thus I would make it for personal consumption.

 I found a note online that you can approximate cake flour by using 2T cornstarch for every cup of all-purpose flour (and then, remove 2 T of flour, so that in essence, you are replacing 2 T flour with 2 T cornstarch). This I did, and the cake turned out alright.

 I have found it to be more economic and more tasty to use fresh lemon zest in my recipes. It does take more time and effort, but it's well worth it!

 I've also found that having a 4 year old assistant creates an atmosphere conducive to FUN and ADVENTURE while baking! Actually, it seems that when she DOESN'T help me, I miss some ingredient or put twice the baking powder as is called for. Perhaps she contributes to my being focused.

 And she takes some fun photos!

 I don't have a food processor, so I used a blender to cream the butter, sugar, etc. Perhaps that is why my cake was more dense than a real poundcake, but it worked for me.

 Because this was an experiment for making lemon loaf MUFFINS, and the recipe was PLENTIFUL, I made both a loaf and jumbo muffins. In the end, I had much batter leftover (not enough for a loaf or whole pan of muffins, but too much to ignore). I suppose that I should have poured more in my loaf pan, being that it was half the height as a normal poundcake. LOL.

 Making the drizzle was the easiest part. Lemon extract and confectioners sugar. Mix. Done. But, I added lemon zest to the recipe, as I do with any lemon recipe.

 After twenty minutes, turn the oven temperature down....

 And cook for 30 more minutes... (Though the muffins were done at 20 minutes)

 Out of the oven...

 With glaze on top...

DELICIOUS!

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Another delicious meal in the "W" household.

Here's a belly shot for my Cali family.

24 1/2 weeks (just a few weeks ago)

..that we had to get the camera out...

...were so extreme...